The Muslim Problem: A Majoritarian Concern in India

Abstract

Muslim communities in modern Indian society are often seen through the lens of race and politics. The separate mechanisms of faith and secularism, which, as Judith Butler observes, may well be “a fugitive way” for certain kinds of “religion to survive”, are meshed together with the politics of representation and counter-representation of Islam and Muslims in the framing of identities. From the Babri masjid demolition to the wake of Ram mandir bhoomi pujan, and the hijab controversy, religion and culture run the risk of being employed in disloyalty, as a threat, in an artistically compromised manner. This article will examine how the tensions between individual subjectivity and a communitarian adherence to culture and faith manifest themselves in the present-day situation in India, as they negotiate between the pull of a liberal individualist lifestyle and that of family and community—between speaking as an “I” and on behalf of a collective.

Keywords:

• Religion
• Muslim
• Hindu
• Ram Mandir
• Babri Masjid
• hijab controversy

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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13 Ibid., p. 94.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., p. 111.

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22 Ibid., p. 27.

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24 Brenda Cossman and Ratna Kapur, Secularism’s Last Sigh?: Hindutva and the Misrule of Law, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999, p. xi.

25 J. Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone”, in Acts of Religion, New York: Routledge, 2002, p. 60.

26 Ibid., p. 67.

27 Ibid., p. 72.

28 Ibid., p. 306.

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32 Ibid., p. 2.

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39 M. Ratti, The Postsecular Imagination, op. cit., p. xxii.

40 Ibid., p. xxii.

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47 R. Bhargava, “What Is Secularism For?”, op. cit., p. 1.

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49 J. Derrida, “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’”, op. cit., p. 60.

50 J. Derrida, “Avowing—The Impossible: ‘Returns,’ Repentance and Reconciliation,” keynote address of the conference “Irreconcilable Differences? Jacques Derrida and the Question of Religion”, trans. Gil Anidjar, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2003.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

SK Sagir Ali

Sk Sagir Ali is Assistant Professor in the Department of English, Midnapore College (Autonomous), Rajabazar Main Road, Midnapore (W), West Bengal, India. He is editor of “Religion in South Asian Anglophone Literature: Traversing Resistance, Margins and Extremism” published by Routledge, 2022; and editor of Literature and Theory: Contemporary Signposts and Critical Surveys also published by Rutledge. E-mail: [email protected]